


The Yellow Door

by ncfan



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 20:20:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16126004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: I am not certain what brings me to this place.





	The Yellow Door

**Author's Note:**

> So, I’m up-to-date, and I thought I’d write fic. (This actually isn’t the first TMA fic I’ve written, but I’ve gotta wait until October 1st to publish it.) Maybe trying out the Helen-Distortion’s POV wasn’t my brightest idea, but eh.

I am not certain what brings me to this place. I was rebuffed before, and bound as I am it would be wiser not to trespass. I am more vulnerable bound to this strange shape than I am when allowed to exist in my entirety, and if attacked by the Archivist, I would survive, but the rest is difficult to see.

I do not know. I think it is something of the woman I wear. Something of her, and something of me. Being bound is hard. Sorting out the parts of Helen Richardson and the parts of myself are hard. Tracing motivations back to their source is hard. It was easier to sort out the anger that was Michael Shelley’s from the anger that is mine. This is hard. Everything is hard.

There is a door that I stand in front of. It is yellow—parsing signals into colors that human eyes can see is something that comes from Helen Richardson; Helen Richardson was someone who needed to be aware of colors—and I stand in front of it. I knock upon the door, and there is no reply.

Knock.

Knock.

The hollow sound reverberates within my walls and dies upon my carpets. It is met with a silence that feels like nothing quite so much as the terrible silence in the moment before I was bound up with Michael Shelley. Ecstatic triumph fading into terror that floods through my every door so that the foundations scream with their horror. Or perhaps it is not that. Perhaps it is something quieter.

The door is locked, and it should not be. The Archivist’s dreams are full of lies and half-truths, and I am at home in these things; it should be a mean feat only to make my way there, to open the door into the Archivist’s dreams. But the Eye is behind that door as well, and it suffers no intrusion upon its feeding. The Eye is not bound. The unbound Eye, though it comes to this world through cracks in the fabric of the universe, is beyond my ability to defy so completely as to bodily snatch the Archivist from his dreams. So the door is locked.

On my side, the door is locked. Whether it is locked on the other side, I am less certain.

I knock again, harder, pushing the arm of this body forward again and again to beat a loud, erratic tattoo on my door, like the beating of Helen Richardson’s heart when she first came to me.

The door does not open, but this time, I hear a sound. It is faint through the door. It is a creaking, wobbling thing. There is a word for it, but I cannot catch it. I chase after the word, but it flits beyond my reach, and escapes me.

I take the knob of the door in my hand and twist, but the door is locked. I do not know why I expected any different. I do not know why I expected it to open. I do not know why I continue to twist the knob in my hand.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I don’t think Jon’s gonna be saved from the dream world by means of Helen ex Machina, partly because I’m not sure that the Distortion can reach someone through their dreams (and even less certain they can reach someone as bound up with another Power as Jon is in his dreams), and because I feel like Jon’s gonna be pulled out of the dream world by other means. And also because even if Helen-Distortion can reach out to Jon in his dreams, he’s too terrified, too guilt-stricken, and too stubborn to ever open that door.


End file.
